Why Do Lingerie Brands Keep Designing With Young Bodies in Mind?

When looking at underwear advertising you could be forgiven for thinking women stop caring about beautiful underwear somewhere around their early 30s.

The imagery overwhelmingly celebrates youth. And when brands do turn their attention to older women, suddenly practicality seems to be a consideration more than style, beauty or desirability.

Which raises an interesting question: Why does the lingerie industry keep designing with young bodies in mind?

Fashion Has Always Been Obsessed With Youth

This isn't unique to lingerie. Fashion and beauty have a long history of presenting youth as the ideal, and older women remain significantly less visible in advertising. Research has repeatedly found older women to be particularly underrepresented. One recent study examining the online advertising of two major luxury fashion brands found that older women appeared in just 6.5% of the content analysed.

Lingerie arguably magnifies the problem because it sits at the intersection of fashion, beauty, bodies and sexuality.

For generations, women have been taught that ageing is something to resist, disguise and even fear. The lingerie industry didn't invent that message, but it has certainly helped reinforce it by overwhelmingly presenting youth as the body most worthy of being seen.

Marketers Have Traditionally Chased Younger Consumers

There are commercial reasons brands have historically coveted younger customers too.

Marketers can see younger consumers as an opportunity to establish loyalty early, and fashion businesses naturally pay attention to shoppers who adopt new trends and brands.

There's also a persistent assumption that younger consumers have more freedom to spend on fashion, while women further into adulthood may be juggling mortgages, children, school fees and the thousand other expenses that arrive with life.

But assumptions about who will buy something can easily become self-fulfilling.

If beautiful, fashion-led lingerie is overwhelmingly designed, photographed and marketed to younger women, while mature women are offered predominantly practical alternatives, what exactly are we learning when older women don't buy it?

Perhaps they don't want lingerie... Or perhaps they don't want the lingerie and marketing they're being offered.

The Industry Keeps Designing for the Bodies It Already Knows

Habit plays a role too.

Clothing is commonly developed around standardised measurements and fit models, then graded into different sizes. But bodies don't simply become proportionately larger versions of one another.

Research into clothing fit has found that mature women's changing proportions aren't necessarily accommodated simply by producing larger sizes.

And women's bodies can change throughout adulthood for all sorts of reasons, including pregnancy, postpartum changes, perimenopause, menopause and ageing.

That matters enormously when you're designing underwear.

A waistband that works beautifully on one body shape may dig or roll on another. The position of a leg opening, amount of bottom coverage, rise of a brief and stretch of a fabric can all affect how underwear actually feels once it's on a real body.

Good underwear for mature women isn't simply younger women's underwear made bigger.

Somewhere Along the Way, Mature Became Synonymous With Practical

This may be the strangest part.

Search for comfortable underwear for women over 50 and you'll find plenty of sensible options. Search for beautiful lingerie and the visual language changes dramatically. At Wicks, we wonder: why are women still being asked to choose?

Perimenopause and menopause can also bring entirely new considerations. Sweating, changing skin and bladder leakage can suddenly make breathable fabrics, moisture management and discreet absorbency much more relevant. But none of those things requires underwear to become aesthetically clinical.

• A woman looking for moisture-wicking underwear because perimenopause has made her feel hotter hasn't stopped caring about beautiful fabric.
• A woman experiencing light bladder leaks hasn't suddenly lost her personal style.
• A woman who prefers high-waisted underwear hasn't relinquished her interest in lingerie.

At Wicks we believe functionality should be something clever happening underneath a beautiful garment, not the garment's entire personality.

What Happens When You Start With the Mature Woman Instead?

This is the question behind Wicks.

Rather than designing underwear around a young body and assuming it will continue working as the sizes increase, we think about the body wearing it now.

Bodies that have had children. Bodies navigating perimenopause and menopause. Bodies whose proportions have changed. Bodies that want softness, coverage or a higher waist. Bodies that occasionally leak, sweat and generally behave like human bodies.

That thinking influences everything from fit and fabric to functionality.

Wicks underwear is lined in soft GOTS-certified organic cotton, with moisture-wicking fabrics, anti-odour protection, thoughtful coverage and discreet functionality where it's useful. But it still looks and feels like lingerie.

Because women over 40, 50, 60, 70 and beyond aren't one demographic. Some love thongs. Some want full coverage. Some need absorbency. Some simply want beautiful, comfortable underwear they can put on in the morning and forget about.

Designing for mature women isn't about creating a new uniform for middle age. It's about creating more choice.

Maybe It's Time to Design for the Women Who Are Actually Here

Habit is powerful. So are old ideas about youth, beauty and which women fashion is supposed to speak to.

But women don't stop caring about style because their bodies change. They don't stop wanting beautiful things because they've turned 50. And they certainly don't disappear because advertising stops representing them.

The lingerie industry has spent a very long time designing around an idealised young body. Perhaps the more interesting opportunity is to start designing for all the other ones.

Because our bodies were never the problem. The lack of imagination in designing for them was.